Bluetooth Used To Track Traffic Times 133
First time accepted submitter ChanukahZombie writes "The City of Calgary, AB has introduced a new traffic congestion/timing information platform for drivers. 'The system collects the publicly available data from Bluetooths to estimate the travel time and congestion between points along those roads and displays the information on overhead message boards to motorists.' Currently only available on the Deerfoot Trail (the city's main highway artery) but will be 'expanded in the future to include sections of Crowchild Trail and Glenmore Trail in the southwest.' As for privacy concerns, the city says it cannot connect the MAC address collected to the device owner."
Re:What gadgets are being monitored? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need to monitor every bluetooth device. You just need a decent sampling of users passing through points in your "system". This is just one of several ways you can uniquely identify a particular object to track overall flow of the herd.
Re:What's so new about this? (Score:5, Informative)
Google Maps already does this with Android phones feeding google traffic density and speed data.
Its eerily accurate.
Traveling over the holiday weekend we got into some crawling slow traffic on the freeway. Google maps traffic layer said the red zone would end ahead as soon as we passed a particular location which just happened to be near a car dealership. As soon as we drove by that dealership traffic resumed normal flow.
And they do this with zero additional infrastructure. Why is Calgary wasting tax payer money installing additional sensors, when they could buy the service from Google, or probably just use it for free?